Editor's Introduction xxvii 



keeping down branches, so that the eye is attracted, 

 now into the depth of the wood, now above, now be- 

 low the boughs, and every possible variety within the 

 region of the beautiful presented. This beauty is never 

 displayed naked, but always sufficiently veiled to leave 

 the requisite play for the imagination ; for a perfect park 

 — in other words, a tract of country idealized by art — 

 should be like a good book, which suggests at least as 

 many new thoughts and feelings as it expresses. The 

 dwelling-house is not visible till you reach an opposite 

 height ; it then suddenly emerges from the mass of the 

 wood, its outline broken by scattered trees and groups, 

 and its walls garlanded with ivy, roses, and creeping 

 plants. It was built after the plan of the possessor, in 

 a style not so much Gothic as antiquely picturesque, 

 such as a delicate feeling for the suitable and harmo- 

 nious conceived to be in keeping with the surround- 

 ing scenery. The gardens lay in all their indescribable 

 glow of beauty in a narrow and fertile valley full of high 

 trees under which three silver springs gush forth, and 

 flowing away in meandering brooks took their course 

 in all directions amid impervious thickets of blooming 

 rhododendrons and azaleas. 



Of Chiswick, Piickler has the following per- 

 tinent criticism to make : — 



I found the garden much altered, but not, I think, 

 for the better ; for there is a mixture of the regular 

 and irregular which has a most unpleasant effect. The 

 ugly fashion now prevalent in England of planting the 

 pleasure-ground with single trees and shrubs, placed at 

 a considerable distance apart almost in rows, has been 

 introduced in several parts of the grounds. This gives 

 the grass-plots the air of nursery grounds. The shrubs 

 .are trimmed round so as not to touch each other, the 

 earth carefully cleared about them every day, and the 



